The sensitivity of characteristics of cyclone activity to identification procedures in tracking algorithms

Abstract

The IMILAST project (‘Intercomparison of Mid-Latitude Storm Diagnostics’) was set up to compare low-level cyclone climatologies derived from a number of objective identification algorithms. This paper is a contribution to that effort where we determine the sensitivity of three key aspects of Northern Hemisphere cyclone behaviour [namely the number of cyclones, their intensity (defined here in terms of the central pressure) and their deepening rates] to specific features in the automatic cyclone identification. The sensitivity is assessed with respect to three such features which may be thought to influence the ultimate climatology produced (namely performance in areas of complicated orograph..